[Financial Technology] Manulife Hongkong Ligu Digital Platform aims to achieve 80% paperlessness in 3 years

Thematic interviews

Written by: Wen Haozong

2019-12-04 08:00

In recent years, the trend of insurance technology has hit Hong Kong. The Insurance Regulatory Bureau this year approved two virtual insurance licenses through the "Fast Track", which will bring new life to the insurance industry in Hong Kong. Facing the new generation of insurance companies in the cities, the traditional insurance giants have not neglected to continuously improve digital services.

Wen Yingjie, who has more than 30 years of experience in the industry and is currently the chief information technology director and chief operating officer of Manulife Hong Kong, is one of the company's digital bannermen. He believes that the key to digitalization in the insurance industry is to take into account customer acceptance, and revealed that Manulife will promote digitalization with two major focuses.

The HKMA has issued the first batch of eight virtual banking licenses this year, bringing the banking industry in Hong Kong to a wave of FinTech. On the other side, following the first virtual life insurance license issued to Bowtie last year by the China Insurance Regulatory Bureau, it also granted a virtual general insurance license to Asia Insurance-owned Avo in October. This piece has been issued by The "fat pork" segregated by the traditional insurance giants is bound to usher in more challenges from the "little giants."

However, on the battlefield of insurance technology, many traditional insurance companies have already been eager to prepare for the challenge, and actively improve their digital capabilities. Among them, Manulife Hong Kong will launch an online claims and insurance platform later this year. Last week, it added an outpatient surgery-free electronic service to actively accelerate digital deployment.

Wen Yingjie believes that the key to promoting digitalization in insurance companies is to target the pain points of the customer experience. (Photo by Wen Haozong)

Last week's free outpatient surgery service

Wen Yingjie, who is responsible for leading Manulife's digital strategy and has been in the life insurance industry for more than 30 years, pointed out that Manulife expects to improve customer experience through digitalization and will continue to focus on improving self-service platforms and paperlessness. He said that since January last year, the company launched an online claims platform "ClaimSimple", which allows customers to submit claims online, and can "pay with money" within two working days. Apply online.

However, online claims are always only a "halfway station" for improving the customer experience. Wen Yingjie said that Manulife ’s push-out electronic service for outpatient surgery last week is just solving the pain points of customers when claiming. Customers only need to scan the QR code at the clinic to receive pre-approval. As a result, surgery can be performed immediately afterwards, and no cash settlement is required throughout the process. "You can leave immediately after completing the operation without filling in any forms." Other protection plans.

In addition to electronic claims, Manulife also launched an online insurance platform in April this year. Wen Yingjie said that the online platform is more suitable for products with relatively simple terms. For example, since April, more than 70% of the customers of TVC have applied online; as for the relatively complicated ones, For products such as voluntary health insurance, customers still tend to seek agency advice. Online insurance and agency channels are still more one-sided. "(The former) may only account for less than 1%." By improving customer self-service platform capabilities, Wen Yingjie expects the company After 3 years, more than 80% of the contacts with customers can be completely "paperless" through digital channels.

Manulife launched its online platform "BuySimple" in April. Customers can purchase products such as voluntary medical insurance. (Profile picture)

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Although Hong Kong's industry is committed to digitalization, in the mainland across the river, banks and the insurance industry have long been fascinated by fintech, and the outside world has criticized Hong Kong's fintech backwardness. Wen Yingjie, who has worked in Shanghai for many years, disagrees. The reason is that the application of insurance technology, in the final analysis, depends on the acceptance of customers. "It can reach the ceiling, but it is boring if it can't meet the needs of customers." Mentioned that Manulife launched a face recognition technology system in the Mainland as early as 2017, which can replace the handwritten signature to complete the claim process, but the same technology may not be suitable for Hong Kong people. "If there are other methods that can bring the same customer experience, what? Not happy? "

Insurance company innovation must be "internal and external"

However, the insurance industry has always been a highly regulated industry. How to nurture innovative ideas under regulations has become a major problem for insurance companies. Wen Yingjie said that the company is open to cooperating with external start-ups. Some colleagues even provide advice to external start-ups. "Start-ups may not know the commercial potential of new technologies, so we will provide guidance to help them put their technology into commercial applications." The company also launched an OCR (Picture Recognition) solution in November with the same Israeli startup. The machine reads and directly enters the text on the form to expedite the processing of customer instructions, such as automatic payment, account conversion, new establishment We still receive thousands to tens of thousands of forms, such as accounts, every month. We still need a lot of manual processing and can be automated in the future. "

But in any case, innovation can not only rely on "outsourcing", but also start seeding from within the company. Wen Yingjie said that he tends to ask open questions to colleagues, and he will not end prematurely on the grounds of supervision and technical restrictions. "It only tells them what the problem is. As for the solution, they will let them think.

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